Arazkhar Demons

 

Arazkhar is an obscure land, filled with dark frightening forests, beneath an endless fog and creepy sounds that you can hear in all the nearby villages. Those same noises throw shivers down the even bravest and strongest warrior’s spine.

Arazkhar isn’t the nicest place for one to visit, and being it an awful place people promise the world to whom can manage to go through all the dangers and terrors of Arazhkar and to get out of it alive to tell the story. Since no one came back to tell their adventures, the people made the stories up, some might be true others not, we’ll never know.

The most told story about this horrific place, it’s about their demons. No one knows how this story even came up, but it’s the one that goes around every village’s pubs.

Roy was a fearless young warrior, brave and ambitious. “I, by myself shall enter the realm of Arazhkar and hunt down one of those terrifying creatures. After that I will be covered in gold like we were all promised!” — vouched for Roy to his drunk audience at the pub.

One drunk knight, slurping his cheap ale, laughed out loud and shouted: — “Bullshit! Young man, if you’re going to Arazkhar, I can’t even wish you well because you’ll be the same as all the other fools that went there before you. No one came back, and they all claimed exactly the same as you. — The man gets up, stumbling across the room, gets closer to Roy, and puts his hand on his shoulder — You are nothing compared to that awful place, just by standing at the entrance you start to see things in your head, you feel that horrific atmosphere deep down your bones, and you’re not even in there yet. Can’t imagine what you’ll see inside. We should all be thankful that the darkness from that place stays there… so don’t mess with things you can’t understand young Roy!”

“Say as you wish old man, I’ll be back and I’ll show everyone that I, Roy, faced that place eye to eye and came back to tell my own story! — Roy Interrupted the old knight, who just sighed and went back to his seat to drink more ale.

Roy went to Arazkhar, fully equipped and confident that he would show everyone that they were wrong about him. Roy arrived and immediately felt that something wasn’t right. He looked back and realized that the beautiful landscape of his hometown had simply vanished. “Pretty odd, probably just a trick from this place.” — Roy thought to himself, and he decided to ignore it and went straight ahead until he heard someone calling his name.

At that moment, the young warrior got struck with a wave of fear he had never felt before. Every hair in his body struck up when he heard his name said in that dark and creepy way, but somehow, the voice was familiar. He then decided to look back, turned around slowly, and saw himself, but different. Disfigured, horrific and the smell was awful, it smelled rotten. How could that be him?

Roy just ran away, but, as Roy enters deep in Arazkhar, the atmosphere in there started to be heavier. He started to feel an irrational fear. “My skin is bothering me! I have to remove it, that’s where the fear comes from!” — Says the warrior, with his mind lost already while he tries to remove his skin with his sword.

With his face completely disfigured from trying to skin his skin, he looked up and he saw himself again, but his face was clean and not injured, he just looked frightened and ran away. He shouted: — “Roy!”. Nothing. “Wait, help me! We can help each other!”. Nothing again, his doppelganger had already escaped into the forest. Roy gave up calling for the other Roy and went on to try to get out of that damned place.

The path gets darker and harder to navigate. He saw a light between the dark branches of the trees. A sense of hope and relief ran down Roy’s body, eliminating the scrambles of fear and self-loathing he was feeling before. After the struggles with the tree branches, the shadows that kept touching him, and the creepy voices that echoed all around the places, Roy managed to get out of the forest.

Back at the pub, Roy is once again gloating his deeds and accomplishments, but now he’s disfigured and horrible to look at. However, something doesn’t add up. Roy feels he’s trapped in an eternal loop, telling the same stories to the same people, with the same words and gestures, as he gets the same glances of the people… hatred, envy… And none of that gave him that feeling of satisfaction and glory he wished for desperately.

It was then that Roy realized what Arazhkar is. An eternal purgatory punishes those who have the audacity of thinking they are superior to Arazhkar. But, it is also a punishment to the person himself, that aimed too high, and that let greed and lust take them over. The real Roy was still standing near a tree in the dark forest of Arazhkar rewatching this happy story in his mind, but at the same time, he knows that he is trapped in an endless loop.